


your absence like a bruise

by nautilicious



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Pining, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Post-Graduation, Sleepy Cuddles, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 03:51:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5032675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nautilicious/pseuds/nautilicious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing him aches like a bruise, red-purple inside his chest, invisible but inescapable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your absence like a bruise

Bitty is half-asleep when he hears the awkward, shuffling step outside his bedroom door. “Jack?”

When the door creaks open, the shape is all wrong to be Jack. And Jack is in Providence, Bitty remembers. Jack has been in Providence for months, yet a scrape outside the door still makes Bitty’s heart rush with anticipation. He rubs his eyes, squashing down the disappointment, and sits up to deal with whichever one of the Frogs is having a crisis in the middle of the night. Except, that shape is pretty small—

“Bitty?” It’s Lardo.

“Lardo. Are you—” Bitty remembers that it’s Wednesday, her Skype night with Shitty. “Did something happen?”

“No,” she says. Then, “Yes. I don’t know. Can I come in?”

Bitty nods before he realizes she probably can’t see him in the dark. “Okay,” he says, and leans back against the wall.

Lardo sits on the edge of the bed. She doesn’t say anything, just hunches into herself. Bitty waits. He regrets being too tired to put on a shirt for bed because even though he knows Lardo doesn’t care it feels strange to be half-dressed and in bed while she’s in the room. Also, it’s chilly.

“I just don’t know, Bits.” Lardo puts her head in her hands. She shivers, and he can’t tell if it’s from the cold or whatever’s upsetting her. “So we Skype a lot, and he visited a couple of times, you know, it was fine. But.” She shrugs. “Grad school is hard, I guess, and he’s just not—” She inhales sharply. Bitty thinks she might be on the edge of tears, and Lardo never sounds that way.

“We were supposed to Skype, but he’s swamped so we talked on the phone while he walked to the library, and he might as well not have called because he wasn’t really there, you know? He’s not sleeping, and I don’t mean the crazy polyphasic thing he does, but like he’s so stressed he can’t even sleep anymore, and I’m just…” She stops for a long moment. “It was hard but good, and now it’s just hard, and I’m scared.”

It’s the most she’s said about the whole thing all semester. He knows how she feels, in a way he wouldn’t have before. Before Jack kissed him, before they started something a year too late to be easy. (Or maybe it would never be easy—Bitty stops that thought right there. Lardo needs him.)

“Shitty loves you,” he says instead. “Maybe he didn’t realize how hard it would be, with the distance and your schedules and everything, but you know that he wants it to work. It’s going to be okay.” He gives her the reassurance he wishes someone could give him.

Lardo shivers again, and yeah, Bitty feels cold, too. “Come here,” he says, lifting the covers, and she slips in next to him. Bitty wraps his arm around her, skootches around until she rests against him comfortably. Her sleep shirt is soft and she smells like the facial soap they share. Her hand is cold on his ribs.

“It’s like when you get bruised in a weird place," she says. "It’s okay most of the time, but then you bang it into something it and it fucking hurts. And everything sucks and it feels like it’ll never get better.” She sighs heavily, exhales warm air across his skin.

Bitty tightens his arm around her. “Does it help to take it into the studio?”

Lardo shakes her head. “It all turns to shit.” She snickers quietly. "Pun not intended. I mean, I know a lot of artists run on angst and caffeine, and I’m not saying that I’ve never been that guy, but it’s too raw to get on the canvas. Nothing comes out right.”

Bitty’s had too many days like that lately, himself. Baking comforts him, but it hurts, too, because Jack isn't there. Bitty likes feeding his friends, and Lord knows the way the Tadpoles inhale his cooking is very satisfying, but—Jack isn’t there. The only reason Bitty can bake at all is because Jack bought him 80% of an oven. Every time Bitty walks into the kitchen his chest aches.

“I think I know what you mean,” Bitty says, and then stops talking. He really doesn’t want to make this about him.

“I know it’s hard for you, too,” she says. “I miss Jack almost as much as Shitty.”

Bitty catches his breath, then lets it out in a long sigh. He hadn’t said, but of course Lardo knew. “Did Jack say something?”

“No, neither one of you dumb boys said anything, but Jack doesn’t have to talk for me to hear him.” She sounds smug, but Bitty can hear the hurt underneath.

“I was going to tell you,” he says. “I trust you. It’s just…having it secret made it easier, sort of. If you knew, then we’d talk about it, and I’d have to think about how much I miss him, and…I’ve been trying not to think about it.”

“We’re spending New Year’s at his house,” she points out. “Shitty and I would have noticed.”

“I know,” Bitty says. “We were going to tell you then, if. Um, if it still looked like it was going to work out.” He bites his lip.

“He loves you, and he wants it to work, right?” 

He feels her smile, a whisper of motion against his shoulder. Bitty smiles back, even though she can’t see it. “Yeah,” he says.

Lardo snuggles him and he slides down into the bed a bit. She makes a happy noise and tosses her leg over one of his. It doesn’t feel sexual, and not just because she almost knees him; it feels like one of her octopus hugs with a few limbs missing. He squeezes back.

“Can I stay?” she asks. “I know I’m gonna have bad dreams.”

Bitty thinks about how, even though he and Jack have only shared this bed a few times it still feels empty every night; about how often he wakes remembering Jack the morning after, rumpled and sleepy and perfect.

“Yeah,” he says. “That sounds like…like it might help. Both of us.”

“I’m the big spoon,” Lardo says. “And it’s not about boners, I just like me some man-pillow.”

Bitty laughs. “Sure. I’m partial to being the little spoon, anyhow.”

They get themselves situated, Lardo curled between Bitty and the door. It’s unquestionably not Jack at his back, but it feels good anyway. She’s warmer than Bitty expected.

“How do you and Shitty not melt your bed?” he asks absently, already winding down for sleep.

Lardo cackles into his back. “We totally do melt the bed,” she says with a little hip gesture that makes her meaning quite clear.

Bitty snorts. “Ugh,” he says. “I love y’all, but, that’s definitely TMI.”

Lardo presses a kiss to his shoulder. “I love you, too, Bitty.”

Bitty sleeps better than he has in weeks.


End file.
